Thoughts On Our State of Mind

A few days ago, a local practitioner was persecuted and my hatred towards the police began to grow, resulting in all kinds of thoughts when I send forth righteous thoughts. I could not calm myself down to study the Fa well. I knew that there was something wrong, but I just could not free myself from it. Also, no answers came on how to rescue the practitioner.

I spoke to a few practitioners about rescuing this practitioner. They asked me, "How can you rescue others with such a state of mind?" Then a practitioner told me the following story, which startled me. In a nearby city, a National Security Team director was very enthusiastic about persecuting practitioners. After a year of persecuting a certain practitioner, anyone else who tried to speak up for that practitioner would have their sentence lengthened. Many practitioners felt troubled and began to study the Fa. Master said:

"As I've said, everything that happens today in the ordinary society is the result of Dafa disciples' thoughts. Even though the old forces do exist, if you don't have those thoughts they can't do anything. When your righteous thoughts are strong enough the old forces can't do a thing." (Teaching the Fa at the 2002 Fa Conference in Philadelphia, USA).

It was our hearts that were causing the persecutor to become more and more evil. All of the practitioners involved in the effort to rescue their fellow practitioners felt that this official was beyond salvation and they were full of hatred towards him. However, fighting evil with evil is wrong, and will be made use of by evil in other dimensions. Persecution will also be heightened in proportion to this attachment, resulting in further complication of the situation.

Once the Fa principle was understood, the flaw was found and the practitioners' state of mind improved. Soon, a group of practitioners came to look for this official. Upon meeting with him, they talked like friends and clarified the truth to him. When they left, the director personally saw them off at the steps and said, "Why didn't you come earlier?" The next day, two illegally detained practitioners were released, even though one of them had already been sentenced to imprisonment in a labor camp.

After the practitioner finished the story, my hatred towards the police was eliminated. At the same time, I realized my shallow understanding of Master's Fa. In the past, I always thought that the big happenings in the world are brought about by Dafa disciples' hearts, and that small things were of no consequence. In essence I was not cultivating myself. I was pushing things outwards when problems arose, thinking, "I don't have any attachments in this regard; it has no relation to me at all." Just as Master said, "The biggest problem we have now is the one I just talked about. That is, when you fail to cultivate yourself and look within."(Fa Teaching at the 2008 New York Conference) Once the Fa principle was understood, I found that I had many other problems in this respect.

To conclude, I'd like to share Master's teaching, "If you are able to succeed in improving yourself this way, what you do then, with a pure heart, will be the best and most sacred." ("Further Understanding" Essentials for Further Advancement)